


You're Missing

by FlyingDutchy



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Aging, F/F, Grief, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 02:44:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12807921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingDutchy/pseuds/FlyingDutchy
Summary: Kryptonians don't age as fast as humans.





	You're Missing

“One black coffee and a latte with caramel, please.” She told the clerk behind the counter who smiled brightly at her. These days, human clerks weren’t needed anymore, but people still preferred the personal interaction instead of talking to a machine. She paid with a swipe of her card and waiting patiently for the coffee to be brewed.

This was one of the old-school coffee places. They brewed it exactly as she liked it. She received the two hot beverages and gulped hers down in one go. The combination of sweet caramel with the strong taste of coffee still was one of the best things about this planet. The brunette behind the counter had her eyes wide open. “You’re…”

“Yes. Have to go now though, she doesn’t like it when I reheat the coffee with my eyes.” She ran from the counter and the moment she got out of the glass doors into the busy streets of National City, she jumped and flew right to the place she needed to deliver this coffee. This place was almost busier than downtown, with people hurrying along in white coats—some outfits never changed.

“I’m here to see Alex Zor-El.” She knew the room, of course, but even she was still required to check in here.

The young boy behind the check-in desk dropped his mouth open. “They weren’t lying.”

“First day here?” The boy nodded.

“They told me Supergirl comes every day. Well, you know the way.” She smiled brightly at the kid and walked at a relatively normal pace through the pristine hallways. Luckily they had done away with the white, sterilized colors decades ago, and there were many beautiful paintings of landscapes all over the walls.

With her coffee securely in her hands, she walked through the open door into the room she was visiting. Her sole reason for being here was seated in the motorized chair next to the window.

“Hey.” She walked next to the person sitting there and pressed a kiss to the firm lips.

“Hey, you.” She trailed her hands through the grey hairs, exactly in the way she knew Alex liked it.

You see, Alex was 91, frail and old. Kara was 90—or 114 if you count the years in the phantom zone—and she was still the same as she was 65 years ago. “I’ve brought coffee.”

“From Noonan’s?” Alex smiled, and even if her face was filled with wrinkles and her eyes told a story of a long and tiresome life, she still lit up exactly like she had when they were younger.

“Careful, it’s hot.”

“Didn’t reheat it?” Kara shook her head. She helped Alex’s shaking hands bring the hot cup to her mouth and carefully let her sip the beverage. It lightened her day that a small gesture like this could bring so much pleasure to her wife.

She cleaned up a bit in the room and dropped some fresh clothes and watered the plants. All things the staff usually did, but Kara loved being helpful. That was her job, after all.

Alex suddenly was wrecked by coughs. Kara caught the half-full cup of coffee before a single drop spilled and safely put it away on the table. Then she rubbed along her wife’s spine to ease the pains.

“It’s not going to be long now, I think.” Alex said and Kara froze. She nodded in Alex’s hair, breathed her in—she still smelled the same—and forced back a few tears into their ducts. “Did you get it? You don’t normally go all the way to Noonan’s.”

Kara nodded and retrieved a vial with a glowing crystalline liquid. The vial was made from a special transparent substance—developed ages ago by one of her best friends over at L-Corp—which blocked the effects of the material inside. Otherwise she would be almost as frail as the person wrecked by coughs.

“Will it be painful?” The tremble in Alex’s voice caught Kara off guard. She knew her wife was in pain right this second, too stubborn to take the painkillers—the agent never wanted them after she sustained injuries in the field either.

“Yes.” She heard Alex swallow heavily. Kara knew that her love didn’t want her to do this, but this was not her choice, it was Kara’s.

“Let’s talk about something else.” Kara said. “What did you do today?”

Alex launched into an explanation of the work she’d been doing on her remote computer. Even if her body was frail, the part of her that Kara loved the most was still as sharp as ever. “I solved a part of the problems with the telomere’s damage. J’onn’s DNA is still helping out, though its application to human cells is still a challenge. CRISPR-XN technology works in the lab, and can be used. We only need a way to stop the lymphocytes from attacking their new brothers which will repair cell damage.”

Kara nodded along as if she understood it all. “So you think you can solve the aging problem?”

It had become Alex’s goal in life to solve that particular aspect of human biology. Aging. It never was a real problem to her before, she viewed death as part of the biological life cycle. It all changed when she faced her own mortality in comparison to Kara’s. In the tearful confrontation that followed that revelation, Kara had revealed her plans for when Alex would inevitably pass away.

“Not me. It’s going to take too long.” Even if she could, it would be too late for Alex until the process could be put into practice. They were back to where they started. “There is nothing I can say to talk you out of this?”

“No.”

“There’s people that need you. What would the world do without Supergirl?”

“The world was fine for years before me. It will be fine after me.”

“What about the kids?” Kara swallowed.

“They’re already grandparents themselves. They don’t need their moms.” That was a blatant lie. Children always needed their parents, a thing that became even more apparent when she lost her second set of parents: Eliza and Jeremiah. Alex did not call her out of the lapse in truth. “And I can’t outlive you _and_ them.”

She didn’t say the thing that was on both of their minds. _Amy._ Their daughter who they had had to bury. It had been a sudden heart attack, there was nobody close and no prior heart problems. It had taken weeks for Kara to get over the feeling of failure. She was Supergirl, but couldn’t save the most important persons to her. It had taken her other three children and her wife’s effort for a longer part of the year to get her to smile again.

There were tears in Alex’s eyes and Kara brushed them away. She whispered that it’ll be okay. She lived a fulfilling life, she was happy and glad that she got to spend it on earth.

“Can you promise me you’ll try, at least? Maybe you’ll find someone…” Kara shook her head at the second part.

“You know that’s not how it works for Kryptonians. Once we fully commit ourselves, it’s for life.” They could dally and explore at first, but after the bonding ceremony their biology changed to commit themselves to one person only. This had its own evolutionary benefits, but their evolution had never encountered a situation like this, where one part of the whole would outlive the other by many lifetimes. “But I promise that I’ll try. I’m never one to give up without a fight.”

Her wife sat up straighter right away, as if a weight was lifted from her shoulders. Alex cast one last glance at the offending vial as Kara put it away, and then she asked about who she saved today and if she was wearing her tight Supergirl suit underneath her clothing. She told her wife no, but Alex wanted to check anyway. So Kara closed the door to the room in the hospital, and showed her that she was not wearing a suit underneath.

 

 

 

_“So we’re just gonna go over a few things you filled in.” The woman said at the table across from them. “You are Alex and Kara Danvers?”_

_They nodded for the table and showed their IDs and birth certificates. The brunette checked them briefly and compared the data on them with the data on the sheets she had gotten from her briefcase. Linda was their contact at the local agency in National City. It would be an exciting day for them._

_“Good. First things first, Alex, you write that you are an agent, what does that entail exactly?” Alex launched into an explanation of her job, without mentioning that there is an Extra-Normal part to the job. The woman nodded along. “It seems the job is dangerous and you might be away at odd hours. We do require stability in the household. I assume that Kara will provide that?”_

_“What do you mean?” Kara asked._

_“Alex filled in these forms, right?”_

_“Yes. Kara was unavailable at that time.”_

_“I get why you wrote what Kara’s vocation was Supergirl, we get that more often when women or men describe their stay-at-home partners.” Kara snorted so hard that her glasses flew off her face. She scrambled quickly to get them. Linda looked at her incredulously. “Something funny?”_

_“Ah-well-you see. I-uhm-I am Supergirl.” She didn’t put the fake spectacles back on her face and instead loosened her hair from her ponytail and smiled broadly at the woman._

_“I do see the resemblance. Are you a mascot somewhere?” Next to her, Alex burst out in coughs trying to hide her laughter._

_“It’s the smile Kar, look more serious.” She did as she was commanded. She dropped the smile and frowned her brows a bit more as if she was staring down a criminal. Still there was no spark of recognition. “Alright, you win. You proved your disguise was actually working and people see what they expect to see.”_

_Linda was thoroughly confused and was almost about to become angry at them for making a laughable situation of something as serious as this. At that moment, Kara hovered out of her chair.  The woman’s eyes became big as she scrambled to get away from them, surprised and shocked at what she saw. “You’re—you’re—.”_

_“Supergirl, we tried to tell you.” She sat back down and waited for the woman to calm down. It took a while as the brunette regulated her breathing and collected the papers she had throws all across the room. Kara felt Alex’s hand squeeze the top of her leg in comfort. She wrapped her own fingers around hers and bit the bottom of her lip._

_“So—Supergirl and Alex Danvers—why did you decide to adopt a child?”_

_She felt Alex’s eyes on her. “I was adopted myself when my parents died. And it was the best thing that happened to me. So I—we thought that we could either try IVF or adopt. We both instantly had a preference to try for adoption first.”_

_“It says here that your parents are Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers… for the both of you?”_

_“I was adopted by Alex’s parents, my real name is Kara Zor-El.”_

_“So you’re sisters?” They both shook their heads. “A couple?”_

_Alex explained that while they grew up in the same house, there was an instant attraction to something more than just sisters. It took them long to figure out what that was, but by their twenty-fifth year, nine years ago, they finally understood what these feelings below the surface were._

_“We’re still trying to change our name to Zor-El, but I have not revealed my identity yet. We both decided that we should not hide that when we have kids. It would lead to all kinds of problems.”_

_The woman nodded along. There seemed to be a different air to the room now, as if everything suddenly felt right. “We don’t really have protocol for this—a super hero and alien adopting someone—so I’ll have to make a few phone calls before we can introduce you to a few foster-homes where these children are currently growing up. I’ll be right back.”_

_She sounded positive and Kara beamed at the woman as she left the room. She was bouncing around in her seat, unable to contain herself at the possibility that they might be having a kid soon. It would throw their lives in disarray, but they both wanted it so bad that she couldn’t care less about that. She had the urge to kiss the person who was most important in her life._

_Kara turned towards the right, and blinked. The chair was empty. “Alex?”_

_Fast as lightning, she turned around to survey the room. Nobody was there. “Alex?!”_

_Linda returned from the phone call while Kara was still panicking. “Alright Miss Zor-El, everything seems to be in order for you to adopt. It’s uncommon for us to let single mothers adopt a child, but we’re confident that Supergirl can handle this.”_

_“What do you—where is Alex?” The brunette looked confused._

_“Who is Alex? You came her alone.”_

 

She gasped as she shook awake. With her right hand she shot out to the mattress and pillow besides her. It was empty. “Alex?”

Kara called out. There was no response. She quickly dressed herself, putting on jeans and a sweater. Meanwhile, she kept looking around, through the walls, but there was no one in the house beside herself. She burst through the front door and flew up into the sky. She startled her neighbor—they knew who she was but she always used to be careful around the humans.

Kara flew straight to the city center. She had to dodge a few flying cars—a novelty which quickly had gotten out of fashion for the majority of the population—and wanted to go straight to the DEO headquarters.

Something stopped her dead still in the sky. Thrown completely off balance, she had to grip herself to one of the buildings she was flying past or she would have fallen to the ground. She saw herself. A huge electronic display with the latest news had an image of her.  She’d been on there before, more often then she could remember, but never like this.

Kara was kneeling in the grass, her clothes crumpled and shoulders slumped forward. She couldn’t see her face, but she remembered what she was feeling. A rectangular hole was in front of her, behind that hole was a big marble headstone. Her fists were buried into the ground, craters were around them as she had punched the ground in anger and sorrow. As if she wanted to punch to the underworld and collect what was hers. No one was around her—she had requested to have some time alone—and in her despair she had not noticed that anyone had gotten close enough to take this picture of her most private moment.

 _Alex is gone._ She remembered. The funeral was yesterday and she had broken down completely after keeping it together for the few days between her dead and the funeral. She remembered crying for hours,

 _Alex is gone. And this is what they do?_ She feels a rage building up inside of her as she stared at the screen with the offending image and clickbait title. ‘Alexandra Zor-El passed away, is Supergirl truly broken?’

“I’ll show you broken!” She smashed her fist into the concrete wall of the building she was holding on to. The crumbled stones fell down to the ground but she wouldn’t let them. She pulled back her arm and threw the stone with all her power at the screen.

The stone vaporized the instant it left her hand. She screamed in frustration as she tried it again, now with less force. The sonic boom as the second rock broke through the sound barrier shattered nearby windows. Not a second later it exploded against the screen. A series of explosions rocked the screen as it shattered and strewed glass everywhere.

Blinking rapidly, she vaporized each individual shard before it reached the ground with the laser beams shooting out of her eyes. Then she pushed off to finish the job, the headstone was still partially visible on the screen.

Suddenly, two strong arms wrapped around her shoulders.

“Let me go! I’ll show them!” She struggled in their grasp.

“Stop, Kara.” The timbre voice said. “You’re scaring people.”

She looked down at the ground and saw a couple of dozen people staring up at her. Some would surely be recording with their eye implants, sharing it live with the whole world. She sneered at them and burned the ground around their feet.

“I know you’re sad, we’re all sad that she’s gone.”

With a snarl on her face she turned to the green Martian holding her down. “Don’t compare what you’re feeling to what’s going through me right now.”

Her arms were still restricted, so she headbutted the alien. The moment his arms left hers, she knocked him down with both hands. As a rocked streaking through the sky, he torpedoed straight into the ground. Concrete exploded around him and people scattered away from the crash site.

Slowly and deliberately she lowered herself to the road she had thrown J’onn into. The Martian Manhunter crawled out of the hole, relatively unscathed except for his ego. “You’re angry, Supergirl.”

Kara saw red, she wanted to destroy the world that had taken her away from her. “You don’t know half how angry I am.”

“But you’re not angry at me, or at the stupid media board putting it out for the world to see.” J’onn said with conviction. He held his arms out open wide, a stance of submission. “Who are you angry with?”

“ _I am angry at Alex for leaving me alone!”_ Her words echoed through the streets as she shouted them.

She clamped her hand over her mouth as the words left it. Tears shot into her eyes. Tears of shame for even daring to think those words, much less saying them. Her old boss looked at her, sadness in his eyes, but he did not dare to approach her.

Kara stood there in the middle of the road. The dust of the crash was settling around her and the people got a good look at their super hero at her lowest point. She didn’t care about all that. She only cared that she dared to think that it was somehow Alex’s fault for leaving her, and that she had never felt more alone than right this second.

There were multiple moments in her life where she had a right to feel truly alone. In her pod, on the way from Krypton to earth after just having witnessed the dead of her people, should have been the worst. But that pain did not compare to what she was feeling now. She wasn’t even truly alone, she had her remaining three children, their eight grand-children, and even two great-grandchildren.

Stunned, she looked around at the damage she had caused. Disgusted at herself for feeling this way, for tainting the memory of Alex, she knew she had to leave before she did more damage. “I’m sorry, J’onn.”

“It’s okay Kara.”

“I’ve got to go. Put the damages on my account.” Without giving him a second to respond, she pushed off from the ground and left National City behind her.

 

 

 

Footsteps crunched the snow outside the Fortress of Solitude. She heard them long before they were close, long before the bangs sounded on the sheets of ice.

“Kara—mom—I know you’re in there.” A strong male voice sounded through the walls. With a stiffness of unused muscles, she clambered on her feet. The vial she’d been carrying slipped from her hands and bounced on the floor. It didn’t break, the material was too strong for that.

“Are you certain she’s in here?” A second voice, a raspier one, clearly female.

“Yes, Emma, of course.” A third, again a man but higher pitched and less deep than the first. She recognized these voices and familiar instincts rose up. She knew it was cold outside—it was cold here as well, but warmer than outside—and she knew that they shouldn’t be outside for too long in these temperatures.

She rushed to the door and opened it. The rocks slid away, scraping along the walls, and light filtered into the room.

“Mom.” Her youngest—still sixty three years old—rushed forward and enveloped her in a hug. “We were worried.”

“Jack here was worried. Mark and I were not, of course.” Emma, her dark-skinned daughter said with a relieved smile on her face. Her short, graying, curly hair framed her face. Mark and Jack laughed at her comment, their breath freezing as it left their mouths.

Physically, her boys where both taller than she was, and Mark was burlier while Jack was a straw. Mark nudged Emma’s shoulder. “Emma, you ordered us to look for you _everywhere._ ”

She smiled her first smile in the past two months. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.” Jack never minced his words. He was a troubled kid when Kara and Alex had adopted him, but his brother and sisters, together with a little help from Alex and Kara, made a real good man out of him. He had pushed passed them into the room with the statues of Kal-El’s parents. He seemed to search for anything that revealed to them that she had been here for the past sixty-five days. There wasn’t much evidence, besides an imprint in the ground.

The man bucked forward and gathered something from the ground. “What’s this?”

_The vial._

Kara nervously looked at her children. She never felt so small before them. Emma squeezed her hand. “So it’s true.”

Surprise must have been visible on her face because her daughter continued. “Alex had said something, that you might do something stupid when she passed.”

Kara snorted. That did sound like Alex. “I wouldn’t do it without informing you. But yes, I had planned for _something stupid_.”

She walked to Jack, Emma and Mark in tow. Jack handed her the vial, and she twisted the top off. Green light shone from the dangerous substance, dangerous only to her.

She turned around and faced her three children. For a second she wondered where their kids were—but they were also all grown up and could be left by themselves. “I planned—still plan—to end my existence.”

“Mom, this isn’t what mum wanted.” It would’ve been a low blow, if it wasn’t true.

“I know, Alex tried to convince me perhaps a hundred times.”

She had come here to meditate. To convince herself that she should not end her existence with the substance. Kara had thought about finding reasons, but the longer she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that she should end it. Having lived for ninety years should be long enough—there were humans doing assisted suicide because they had ‘completed’ their life at younger ages these days.

“How long do I have to continue living?” She asked her children. “Until I have buried all of you? Your kids? Your grandkids?”

She tried no to sound bitter, but she saw her children flinch. Mark stepped forward and put an arm around her shoulder. He was big enough for her to curl up in. It looked and felt silly, she looked half his age but she was his mother, and she was being comforted by her own kid—a seventy-two year old man.

With a trembling voice, the big man started speaking. “We—all three of us—want you here forever. My great-grandkids are asking where their ‘supergrammas’ went.”

She hiccupped when she thought of the small bundles of energy, Mark had two beautiful grandkids, two boys with the yellowest blonde hair you can imagine. She suddenly missed them dearly.

“But we also agree that it’s unfair to you. For you to keep losing everyone.” Her oldest continued. Emma and Jack nodded along. “We just want to support and be with you, whatever you choose to do.”

Two more bodies enveloped her in a hug, which would have been bone crushing had she been human. _If only I was human, then I wouldn’t have this problem._

“Thanks.”

“Anytime, mom.” Jack said.

They were silent for a while and Kara breathed in their scents, their familiarity brought up memories of Alex and her trying to bring them up. Trying and succeeding, if she dared to admit.

She looked at the offending vial in her hand and made a decision.

“I promised your mum that I’d try.”

Jack snorted. “If she’d known that you’d call locking yourself up in a mountain ‘trying’ she’d kick your ass.”

“Jack!” Emma and Mark said, aghast.

“Jack’s right. Alex would do that.” She put the vial back in her pocket. “I will try, for you, for your kids, and for theirs. But I will keep the option open.”

She will give it a fair shot. Maybe in a month, year, or decade she will feel that she has tried for long enough, or maybe by then the pain had dulled and she can try for longer. She did promise, and she intended to keep that promise.

She led the three of them outside into the snowy wilderness that hid Superman’s fortress.

Once outside, she looked back into the room, the same room where she had finally proposed to Alex after failing to go through with her many previous attempts. Kara remembered the surprised gasp, followed by a tearful beautiful smile as she had given her the necklace with the emblem of the House of El. It had been a spur of the moment decision to do it then, right before she went to fight another villain and Alex had been so worried for her.

Now, she saw Alex standing there, her older image morphing back into her younger self. Her foster-sister-turned-wife smiled a tearful smile at her. Tears froze on Kara’s face as they made their way down her cheeks. She nodded and smiled back at the ghostly image.

“ _Khap zhao rrip._ ” I love you.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. 
> 
> Is it Ok that I cried a tear while thinking of this story and when I was writing it as well? Does that make up for this?
> 
> It was actually inspired by the recent Story by FoxoftheDesert (Who wants to live forever). Who had alex having a grey hair and Kara coming face to face with the fact that Alex is growing older and she isnt. 
> 
> \----
> 
> Just as a side note. In my Country (the netherlands) there were discussions last election about 'completed life' euthanasia. Where people--at the time limited to 65 and older--could choose to end their life with assistance from doctors. It's already allowed to do that if you're deadly ill here, but these people would be fine physically. They would just feel that their life was complete, or a drag, or whatever. There were a few really good interviews on the television about people that didn't want to kill themselves the traditional (suicide) way, but also didn't want to continue living. 
> 
> There was a huge discussion around it, and good arguments from either side. The person would have to have this wish for a decently long time, so no spur of the moment decisions etc. They also would be checked by psychologists etc. It isn't part of the law yet, but I think I won't take too long until this is possible--a decade or something. It made me think about this while writing the story.


End file.
